Unwanted By The Alpha, Chosen By Fate

Elara POV:

My fingers traced the scratches in the dark wood of my dowry box, each groove a testament to a past that now felt like a lead weight in my lap. I had been born an Omega, the lowest station in the rigid hierarchy of our kind.

My parents, both proud Beta warriors, had looked upon my birth as a stain upon their lineage.

They poured all their affection, their resources, their hopes for the future into my older twin sister, Serena.

She was strong, a high-ranking Beta from birth; I was but the shadow that trailed in her wake.

My childhood was a litany of lonely nights spent beneath a sliver of moon, my tears watering the roots of the castle's ancient rose bushes.

Until the night I met Caleb.

He was the young heir to the Silver Moon Pack, and our collision near the gardens was not one of chance, but of celestial design.

The Recognition, the moment the Moon Goddess reveals a Fated Mate, was not a gentle dawning but a violent claiming of the senses.

First, the scent of him—an impossible mingling of fresh-fallen rain and the deep, sharp tang of pine—filled my lungs and made the world tilt on its axis.

Then came a surge of heat that set my very blood to boiling, my heart hammering a frantic, wild rhythm against my ribs.

A profound stillness settled in the core of my being, the quiet assurance of a ship finding its harbor after a lifetime at sea.

And deep within me, the wolf I kept caged let out a possessive roar that was not a thought but an instinct.

Mine! she howled.

When his fingers brushed my arm, a current, sharp and electric, shot from the point of contact down the length of my spine.

He was not a boy, but my salvation.

When we came of age, Serena was married to General Arthur, a formidable Gamma who commanded the Alpha's armies.

Caleb and I then completed the Marking ceremony.

He sank his teeth into the delicate flesh at the crook of my neck, leaving a permanent, silvered scar that bound our very lifeblood together.

I allowed myself to believe that happiness was, at last, a thing I might possess.

But then Arthur was dispatched to the northern borders to quell an uprising of Rogues—the dangerous, exiled wolves who roamed without a Pack.

Serena, pregnant and alone at the Gamma estate, became the center of our family's anxieties.

My parents demanded I go and serve her.

I, too, was with child, and the pregnancy had left my health precarious.

Caleb, in a gesture I mistook for protection, offered to go in my stead.

"I will see to Serena's needs for Arthur," he had promised, his lips a warm press against my forehead.

But the line between duty and devotion blurred into nonexistence.

On the night Serena went into labor, Caleb kept a frantic vigil outside her chamber door, his eyes glowing with a feverish red light as he paced the stone floors like a caged beast.

When Serena's twin girls were born, something in Caleb's heart irrevocably shifted.

He showered those children with a father's adoration.

The Pack's finest cuts of meat, the most brilliant jewels from the treasury, all found their way to the Gamma estate.

Aria received the leftovers.

Last year, the Queen of our dominion had gifted a protective silver amulet to my daughter.

While common silver is a poison that burns our skin, this was royal silver, blessed by the Moon Goddess to heal and shield the wearer.

Caleb intercepted the royal messenger.

He took the amulet and placed it around the neck of Serena's sickly twin.

When Aria wept, Caleb had merely patted her head.

"The next time a rare treasure comes into my hands, it will be yours, Aria. I give you my word as an Alpha," he had said.

Then came the snow fox pelt.

Aria had stayed awake until the castle bells tolled midnight, her gaze fixed upon the door.

She fell asleep in my arms, whispering his name into the folds of my dress.

The following morning, as I passed Caleb's study, I overheard his orders to a guard.

"Take this pelt to the tailor," Caleb commanded. "Have it fashioned into two cloaks for the Gamma's daughters. The winter proves too harsh for them."

I had pushed the heavy door open, my protest a choked whisper.

"You promised it to Aria."

Caleb did not deign to look at me.

"Aria has her own fur when she shifts. Serena's girls are delicate," he had replied, his voice a wall of ice.

The bitter memory dissolved as Aria's small fingers tugged at my sleeve, pulling me from the past and back into the cold reality of the bedchamber.

Her pale blue eyes, wide with a faint confusion, searched my face.

"Mama, why are your cheeks wet?" she asked softly.

I hastily wiped my face, forcing a smile that felt brittle.

"They are not, my love," I lied. "I am only glad you are awake."

But as I looked into her eyes, a new and terrible stillness took hold of me.

The golden spark that always danced in their depths—the living presence of her inner wolf—was gone.

A low, keening whine rose from my own wolf's throat as I searched that empty gaze. Our daughter's spirit had survived the ice, but the cost was a piece of her very soul.